Hey!
Been away for a very long time, the last post was in 2012! I haven't been following copyright news nearly as much as I used to. Jon Newton's long departed p2p.net site was a great resource for copyright news, especially big music's RIAA lawsuits.
Well, big music is at it again, this time suing the Internet Archive over ancient 78 rpm album recordings. Rolling stone has an article covering this here.
To all the creators and descendants of creators thinking they are going to get a chunk of the lawsuit pie, you are kidding yourselves. A question I asked repeatedly during the RIAA lawsuits yet was NEVER able to get an answer to was what, if any percent of the lawsuit money paid to the RIAA got distributed to the artists in whose name they were suing people? I'd bet money it was zero. When it comes to money, what goes to big music, stays with big music. It will be the same thing here. The public will lose a great resource of early recordings, big music and the artists will gain nothing in increased sales(A lot, if not most of this stuff isn't even available).
Sonny Boner and Mickey Rat managed to vastly increase the length of copyright. The public would be far better served if it got rolled back to 50 years, or better yet, 28.